Sophie's Choice - William Styron [263]
I was wonderfully high from the beer. The day itself lay nearly prostrate with heat, but a light breeze was blowing from the park and through the fluttering which the breeze made against my windowshade I heard the sound of Beethoven from above. This, of course, was the handiwork of Sophie, home from her half-day’s work on Saturday, who always turned on her phonograph full blast while she took a shower. I realized even as I spun out my Southland fantasy that I was laying it on thick, sounding every bit like the professional Southerner whose attitudes I abhorred nearly as much as those of the snotty New Yorker gripped by that reflexive liberalism and animosity toward the South which had given me such a pain in the ass, but it didn’t matter; I was exhilarated after a morning of especially fruitful work, and the spell of the South (whose sights and sounds I had so painfully set down, spilling quarts of my heart’s blood) was upon me like a minor ecstasy, or a major heartache. I had, of course, experienced this surge of bittersweet time-sorrow often before—most recently when in a seizure considerably less sincere my cornpone blandishments had so notably failed to work their sorcery on Leslie Lapidus—but today the mood seemed especially fragile, quivering, poignant, translucent; I felt that at any moment I might dissolve into unseemly albeit magnificently genuine tears. The lovely adagio from the Fourth Symphony floated down, merging like the serene, steadfast throb of a human pulse with my exalted mood.
“I’m with you, old pal,” I heard Nathan say from his chair behind me. “You know, it’s time I saw the South. Something you said early this summer—it seems so long ago—something you said about the South has stuck with me. Or I guess I should say it has more to do with the North and the South. We were having one of the arguments we used to have, and I remember you said something to the effect that at least Southerners have ventured North, have come to see what the North is like, while very few Northerners have really ever troubled themselves to travel to the South, to look at the lay of the land down there. I remember your saying how smug Northerners appeared to be in their willful and self-righteous ignorance. You said it was intellectual arrogance. Those were the words you used—they seemed awfully strong at the time—but I later began to think about it, began to see that you may be right.” He paused for a moment, then with real passion said, “I’ll confess to that ignorance. How can I really have hated a place I have never seen or known? I’m with you. We’ll take that trip!”
“Bless you, Nathan,” I replied, glowing with affection and Rheingold.
Beer in hand, I had edged into the bathroom to take a leak. I was a little drunker than I had realized. I peed all over the seat. Over the plashing stream I heard Nathan’s voice: “I’m due a vacation from the lab in mid-October and by that time the way you’re going you should have a big hunk of your book done. You’ll probably need a little breathing spell. Why don’t we plan for then? Sophie hasn’t had a vacation from that quack during the entire time she’s worked for him, so she’s due a couple of weeks too. I can borrow my brother’s car, the convertible. He won’t need it, he’s bought a new Oldsmobile. We’ll drive down to Washington...” Even as he spoke my gaze rested upon the medicine chest—that depository which had seemed so secure until my recent robbery. Who had been the perpetrator, I wondered, now that Morris Fink was absolved of the crime? Some Flatbush prowler, thieves were always around. It no longer really mattered and I sensed that my earlier rage and chagrin were now supplanted by an odd, complex unrest about the purloined cash, which, after all, had been the proceeds of the sale of a human being. Artiste! My grandmother’s chattel, source of my own salvation. It was the slave boy Artiste who had provided me with the wherewithal for much of this summer